Everything You Are: A Novel

by Kerry Anne King

  “Can I help with anything?” Phee asks Jo, the word “dynamite” beginning to take on a whole new meaning. The relationship between Braden and his dad is full of land mines she could not have anticipated.

  “Hey, you got my brother across the threshold,” Jo says. “The least I can do is feed you. Allie, child, you look dead on your feet. Come in the kitchen, let’s get you fed.”

  The girl does look like a pallid ghost. Phee drops an arm around her shoulder and guides her into the kitchen, and then into a chair, feeling even more misgivings about her plan. Allie could definitely have benefited from another day or two of rest.

  “Don’t mind those two,” Jo says. “They never did get on, from the time Braden was a baby. Dad wanted him to follow the good-old-boy tradition—hunting and fishing and drinking beer with the guys on weekends. Mom was always encouraging his sensitive side, and the music, and bemoaning my total lack of either. It’s like Braden and I got swapped, somehow, and both of our folks were disappointed.”

  “My mom was disappointed, too,” Allie says, very low.

  “Seems maybe that’s the way with parents and kids,” Jo replies, still matter-of-fact. “Expectations. And then some big surprise when kids are their own selves, as if we don’t see that coming.”

  “It’s that way with my parents,” Phee agrees. “My mother definitely disapproves of me. Especially right this minute. She’s going to hand me my ass on a silver platter the next time she sees me, on account of this escapade.”

  “Well, tell her I said thanks,” Jo says. “Eleven years since I’ve seen my brother. Hard to believe it’s been so long. Hard to believe it isn’t longer.”

  “What happened to him? And to Uncle Mitch?” Allie asks. “Mom wouldn’t talk about it.”

  “An accident happened.” Jo lifts an enormous pot of soup off the stove and onto a trivet on the counter. “Bowls are in that cupboard right behind you, Phee, if you’d like to get them out. Braden thinks it’s all his fault, what happened to Mitch. Been beating himself up over that for years.”

  “Was it?” Allie asks. “Dad’s fault, I mean?”

  “Of course not. But he won’t hear that.”

  “Hey,” Steph says, coming into the room and sniffing loudly. “That smells fantastic.”

  “Didn’t I see a dog in the rig?” Jo asks. “I can scrounge up some scraps.”

  “He’s in the car. He’s fine out—” Phee is interrupted by raised voices in the living room.

  “Enough with the bullshit excuses! It’s about time you told us—”

  “I can’t tell you what I don’t know!”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake.” Jo marches back into the living room. “Can’t I leave the two of you alone for five minutes? Stop this at once.”

  Len and Dennis sit on the couch, their faces registering their discomfort. Jean and Katie are nowhere to be seen. Braden and his father are squared off in the middle of the room.

  “Back off, Jo,” the old man says. “It’s time we had it out, man to man.”

  “We have company,” Jo says, her voice a warning.

  “If he doesn’t want them to hear this, then he should have come here without them years ago.” His dark eyes shift to Allie, who has followed, right behind Phee. “Aren’t you tired of being in the dark? I sure as hell am.”

  “Dad. Don’t,” Jo pleads.

  “Two men go out to the cabin. Only one comes home. He never talks about it, never says what happened. I think we deserve some goddamn answers. That’s what I think.”

  Phee holds her breath, puts a steadying hand on Allie’s shoulder.

  “You sound like a politician,” Braden’s father says. “‘I’m sorry, I just don’t recall.’ Be a man for once in your life.”

  “Let it go, already,” Jo says. “The details won’t bring Mitch back.”

  “What really matters to Dad,” Braden answers, “is that I’m not Mitch. He was the son you never had and always wanted. He’s dead, and I’m still here. That’s the problem. What you really want to know is why it wasn’t the other way around.”

  “Enough!” Jo snaps. “This is my house, and I won’t hear one more word of this. Not now. Soup and bread in the kitchen. Come on.” She begins herding people out of the living room and toward the kitchen.

  Braden breaks away, out into the cold dark, slamming the door. Phee slips out behind him.

  He’s standing in the middle of the yard, his face turned up to the sky. Phee, born and raised in the city, has never seen so many stars all at once. She feels her way through the dark to the SUV and lets Celestine out. He rewards her with the swipe of a tongue across her hand before beginning an investigation of all the new smells.

  “Amazing, isn’t it?” Braden asks. “The stars make all of this mess seem small and petty.”

  “Hard to believe they are all suns,” she says, taking his words as an invitation to stand beside him. “They look so cold and tiny.”

  “When I was a kid, I thought they were heavenly watchers who didn’t give a damn what happens to us down here.”

  “And now?”

  “Same as when I was a kid.”

  They are silent, staring up at the stars. Phee becomes aware of a silence as vast as the heavens above them, broken only by Celestine’s snuffling and their own breathing. She’s trying to think how to frame an explanation for what she’s done, but Braden speaks first, the last words she was expecting to hear from him.

  “Maybe you were right.”

  Phee sucks in a breath of surprise and chokes on her own saliva, her coughing shattering the silence and the mood.

  “Are you okay?”

  She nods to indicate yes, an edge of suppressed laughter making the paroxysm worse. When she can finally speak, she croaks, “Trust me to plunge us from a sublime contemplation of the heavens to the stupidity of trying to breathe my own spit.” She wipes tears from her eyes, the moisture cold on fingers already starting to turn numb, and then shoves her hands into the pockets of her inadequate jacket.

  “What’s this about me being right?”

  “My life. What’s happened to my family. I spent the last eleven years being a victim. Poor Braden. Can’t play the cello anymore. Can’t see his kids. Please pass the bottle. Typical alcoholic wallowing. The truth is, all along I had choices. Could have fought for the kids. Could have found another outlet for my music. I did this, Phee. There is a curse, and I’m it.”

  “Hard on yourself much? Not being able to play is huge, and we both know alcohol is a—”

  He interrupts her with an impatient brush of his hand. “Before it all went completely south. Before Mitch died and my hands were damaged and all of it, I made a choice then, too, Phee. I chose to stop playing the cello.”

  Cold shivers chase themselves up Phee’s spine, butterflies flutter in her belly.

  “See?” her grandfather’s voice says in her head. “I told you.”

  “Why?” she asks, turning to face Braden. “How?”

  He keeps his head tipped back, eyes on the stars.

  “You were brilliant,” Phee goes on. “Any orchestra in the world must have been open to you.”

  “Lil gave me an ultimatum. Her and the kids or the cello. Either or.”

  “But that’s ridiculous, Braden. It’s who you are.”

  “She had a point, maybe. We’d been fighting over the cello for years. I’d tried playing less, but music wanted all of me, and it left her out. When I was working on a song, it owned me for days. I’d drag myself away to spend time with her, with the kids, but it was just the surface of me. It wasn’t fair to her.”

  Or maybe she was just a jealous bitch who didn’t get music. Phee clamps her lips to keep the thought locked up.

  “I remember this one time we were playing a game with some friends, one of those conversation-starter card games, you know? And this question came up. ‘If there was a fire and you could only save one thing, what would it be?’ My friend answered, ‘My wife.’ No hesitation,
no consideration, just blurted it out almost before the question had been read. And then it was my turn to answer.”

  “And you said cello?”

  “Not out loud. But I hesitated. In my mind I was like, ‘Can’t I manage both?’ Or, ‘surely I’ll grab the cello and Lil can take care of herself.’ I mean, if there really were a fire, I wouldn’t ever have left her to burn, but I’d for sure be trying to save both of them. Lilian answered for me. ‘He’d rescue the cello.’

  “Our friends laughed. They thought it was a joke. But between the two of us, we knew there was a kernel of truth there. We didn’t talk about it then. Maybe we should have, but there would have been no point. I couldn’t alter who I was, and she wanted—needed—more from me. I shouldn’t have ever married. Should have known better.”

  “Maybe you just married the wrong woman.” The stars and the darkness give Phee the courage to say the words.

  He shrugs. “What might have been. No sadder words, right? I can’t go back. Can’t change anything in the past. I thought I’d made the right decision, giving up the cello. Same as if there were a fire, right? Save my family first.”

  “And now?”

  “Now? Just thinking about Allie not playing anymore makes me furious. How dare Lilian try to separate her from that? As a child, she was all music. She could sing on key almost as soon as she could talk. I taught her the names of the notes, and she’d go around the house telling us what note the vacuum cleaner was humming, or the dishwasher. She had color connections for every note in the scale. She’d stand between my legs, tucked between me and the cello for an hour at a time, just soaking up the vibrations.”

  “She blames the music for the accident,” Phee murmurs.

  “She told me. In the hospital, after . . . God, Phee. No wonder she tried to kill herself. If there’s fault anywhere, it’s her mother’s for making her feel she had to sneak around to an audition.”

  “And maybe, just maybe, the same grace extends to you? Your wife was asking you to be something you’re not, to give up your soul. How is that possibly okay?”

  “Knowing that, maybe even believing it, changes nothing. I gave up the cello—not that my intended sacrifice mattered because I couldn’t play anymore even if I’d chosen to. And she kicked me to the curb, anyway. She blamed the alcohol, but that was an excuse. It was already over between us that weekend I came up here to the cabin. And now, here I am, back at the scene of the crime.”

  “Do you hate me for dragging you here?”

  The silence is long enough to be an answer in itself. “This is good for Allie,” he says when he finally speaks. “I see that. And for my sister. It was selfish of me to stay away, unforgivable to keep Allie from her. So I ought to thank you for that.”

  Phee looks up at the stars, wondering which ones got crossed to put her at odds with the one man in the world who has ever held her heart. If he doesn’t hate her, at the very least he must resent her intrusion and meddling.

  “What will you do now?” she asks.

  He shrugs. “We’re all here now. Might as well press on.”

  “I thought it might help you remember.”

  “Maybe there’s a reason for not remembering, did you think of that? Generally when people block out memories, they aren’t happy ones.”

  “If it heals your hands—”

  “It won’t! You need to let that hope go, Phee. It’s too late.”

  “Well, maybe you could at least let go of some guilt. Jo says you blame yourself for her husband’s death, but he had a heart attack. That can’t be your fault.”

  “I hit him.” Braden turns to face her. “I keep having this flashback. The two of us are outside by the lake. He’s sitting by a fire in the firepit, and out of nowhere, I punch him in the jaw. I keep seeing that one moment on repeat, like one of those obnoxious internet GIF things. Over and over and over. And every time, I feel so sick I want to puke.”

  “It’s not like you were beating up on a woman or a child—”

  “I’ve never been in a fight, Phee. Not before or since, on account of my hands. I’d never thrown a punch in my life. It doesn’t take much of a detective to put together the evidence. Me, pissed off enough to punch him. And then, mysteriously, he winds up dead. Whatever memory you’re dragging me back to isn’t going to make Allie’s life better. Or mine, or Jo’s.”

  “But you’re coming to the cabin, anyway?”

  He answers with another question. “You know what Allie said? She said she changed her mind about dying and tried to call for help because she didn’t want her death to be a lie. I guess I don’t want the rest of my life to be a lie. And if there’s the tiniest chance that there is some impossible curse, and that remembering will give me back my hands and that will help my daughter, then that’s what I need to do.”

  “You’re a good man, Braden.”

  “And you’re a manipulative wench, you and your Angels.”

  “None of them know. The plan was to take you and Allie to a cabin in the woods somewhere. They all thought it would be a pleasant escape. I didn’t tell them which cabin, or why. So don’t blame them, whatever you do.”

  The door of the house opens, and Jo emerges onto the porch. Celestine bounds over to sniff her, tail wagging up a windstorm. “Am I interrupting?”

  “Not at all,” Braden says, the relief in his voice a knife thrust in Phee’s heart.

  Jo crosses the yard to join them. “The old man loves you, you know.”

  “Clearly,” Braden says.

  “He’s worse since Mom died.”

  “I’m sorry I wasn’t here for that. And grateful that you take care of him.”

  “We’re all each other has, with Jimmy gone off to college.”

  “God,” he says. “I’m so sorry, Jo. About Mitch—”

  “Maybe if you’d let that go, I wouldn’t have to lose you both.”

  “I didn’t mean—”

  “I know, honey,” she says. She crosses to him and puts her arms around him. Phee goes back to the house and starts organizing everybody for the next stage of the journey.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  BRADEN

  Exhausted as he is, there is no sleep for Braden. A sense of heavy dread keeps his eyes open while his brain churns endlessly through the disconnected pieces of his memory. He lies on the lumpy foldout couch in the common area of the cabin, trying not to disturb the girls in the loft above with his restlessness. Phee and Jean share one of the bedrooms, Len and Dennis the other. Jo has promised—or threatened, he’s not entirely sure which—to come out in the morning.

  Despite the uncomfortable couch, Braden is relieved to be alone. Besides, here at the foot of the ladder that leads to the loft, he’s closer to Allie. His ears are tuned for signs of restlessness. Twice already, he’s climbed the ladder to check on the girls, Allie sandwiched between Steph and Katie, their version of suicide watch.

  All three of them are sound asleep. He keeps hoping he’ll drift into the solace of sleep, but the longer he lies here, the further away it seems. If he gets up and turns on a light, he fears it will wake Allie, who needs her rest, so there’s nothing he can do to distract himself from his thinking.

  The cello isn’t helping. She’s right here in the room with him, still in the case, invisible in the dark but vivid in his mind. He can call up in exquisite detail the sensation of her weight resting against him, the strings pressing into the pads of his fingers, the easy glide of the bow, how the music seemed as natural and necessary as breathing.

  “Remember?” she whispers, and the lines of now and then blur as he drops into the memory of the last time the two of them made music, right here, in this room.

  He’s supposed to be practicing the Bach, but he can’t focus. What’s the point in mastering a piece if he’s not going to play again? Letting his heart speak in the music, he moves through a series of laments and nameless melodies born from the union of his soul with the cello’s.

  “It’s not that
I don’t love you,” he whispers. “I have to do what’s right. This one is goodbye.”

  He begins to play the lullaby he wrote for Allie . . .

  In the present, in the now, something gives way inside him, a dam bursting under the pressure of a memory that refuses to be contained. He’s lying on the lumpy mattress, his lower back aching, and he’s also playing the lullaby, playing it for the very last time.

  He’s immersed in his thoughts and the music when he sees the headlights, an unexpected flare in the dark window.

  Hope leaps in his heart. Maybe it’s Lilian come to tell him they’ll figure something out. She’s had time to think, to understand how the music is everything he is, that he’ll be only half a man without it. He stops playing, watches the door as if it is his only hope of salvation.

  But instead of Lilian, it’s Mitch.

  “No,” the Braden lying on the lumpy mattress whispers, pushing back against the memory. “No, no, no.” But it’s too late; he can’t stop it now.

  Mitch, a cooler in his hands, stamps his feet on the doormat to shake off the snow. His eyes home in on Braden. “Good God, man, you look like hell warmed over.”

  Braden, stricken by the dashing of his last desperate hope, says nothing. Mitch clomps across the room in his boots, leaving a trail of precisely patterned prints behind him. He drops the cooler on the kitchen counter with a thud. “Want a beer?”

  “Thank you, no.”

  “Suit yourself.” Mitch pulls a six-pack out of the cooler, frees a can from the plastic and pops the top, takes a long drink. “That’s what the doctor ordered. Jo sent food. She wasn’t sure if you brought anything, said you might forget to eat. That’s never going to be a problem for me.”

  Mitch drains half of his beer, opens a bag of chips. “We need to talk. That’s why I came out here.” His gaze slides away from Braden’s. He crushes the can, already empty, and tosses it into the trash. Opens another.

  “Might go easier with a beer. Sure you don’t want one?”

  Braden can’t imagine what Mitch wants, why he’s here. They’re not close, have never had anything in common.